


Once Upon a December in the Investiary

by moreagaara



Series: The Emperor Revived [2]
Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood, Blood Magic, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Character Death, Character Study, Comfort, Cross-Posted on deviantArt, Crying, Dark, Death, Deviates From Canon, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emperor Revived, Feelings, Feels, Gen, Gore, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Injury, Literature, Loss, Memory Related, Men Crying, Mild Gore, Pain, Post-Canon, Posted Elsewhere, Sad, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Self-Harm, fan fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-08-11 08:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20150866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moreagaara/pseuds/moreagaara
Summary: Trigger warning:  Self-harmDepartures from the canon:  The Emperor actually did in fact find the Lost Primarchs I alluded to in the canon, but no one actually knows what happened to them.  There is, in fact, a giant conspiracy surrounding them and the manner of their deaths, along with hints that one of them was the first Warmaster of the Imperium, and that their Legions were absorbed into the Ultramarines.  However, this has all grown up around the fact that the original reason there were two "missing" Primarchs was because Games Workshop wanted people to make their own Legions.  Then as the lore continued to be built, that was no longer viable, and that is why we have the giant conspiracy.  For my alternate universe, I decided to Occam's Razor all that shit down to "Daenus just never found them and/or accidentally killed them without knowing or realizing."  Also I later actually did create not just my own missing Legions, but my own pair of missing Primarch OCs (one of whom has a completed backstory which is on its way...eventually).Departure from the canon two:  Angron.  In canon, Angron was a gladiator on a planet named Nucreia, and gladiators there were implanted with lovely machines called Butcher's Nails.  Google them.  Hashtag sarcasm on the lovely machines bit.  However, Angron eventually went full Spartacus and escaped to the mountains with a couple thousand of his gladiator buddies, which is where the Emperor found him.  In canon, the Emperor was told he could only rescue his son, Angron, and that the others had to die because escaped slaves and Nucreian justice and all that, but Angron didn't want to leave without his gladiator buddies (understandably).  So the Emperor kidnapped him via teleport.  The Emperor is an asshole.  In my alternate universe, I made Daenus less of an asshole by having him at least try to rescue said gladiator buddies, by way of gassing the five (count em) attacking armies with the aforementioned mustard gas and claiming weapons malfunction...only the gladiators in question decided to go put everyone in the armies out of their misery while Daenus was busy distracting Angron.  The gladiators did not have gas masks either.  Same result, slightly less dickish Emperor.Other than that, I did my best to stick as closely to the canon as possible.Peep ownership:Games Workshop:  All the Warhammer 40k stuffkaibun-creations:  Xander, Lucifer, and Seymore.Me:  The writing, the Emperor's name, and the altered backstories.Enjoy~





	Once Upon a December in the Investiary

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: Self-harm
> 
> Departures from the canon: The Emperor actually did in fact find the Lost Primarchs I alluded to in the canon, but no one actually knows what happened to them. There is, in fact, a giant conspiracy surrounding them and the manner of their deaths, along with hints that one of them was the first Warmaster of the Imperium, and that their Legions were absorbed into the Ultramarines. However, this has all grown up around the fact that the original reason there were two "missing" Primarchs was because Games Workshop wanted people to make their own Legions. Then as the lore continued to be built, that was no longer viable, and that is why we have the giant conspiracy. For my alternate universe, I decided to Occam's Razor all that shit down to "Daenus just never found them and/or accidentally killed them without knowing or realizing." Also I later actually did create not just my own missing Legions, but my own pair of missing Primarch OCs (one of whom has a completed backstory which is on its way...eventually).
> 
> Departure from the canon two: Angron. In canon, Angron was a gladiator on a planet named Nucreia, and gladiators there were implanted with lovely machines called Butcher's Nails. Google them. Hashtag sarcasm on the lovely machines bit. However, Angron eventually went full Spartacus and escaped to the mountains with a couple thousand of his gladiator buddies, which is where the Emperor found him. In canon, the Emperor was told he could only rescue his son, Angron, and that the others had to die because escaped slaves and Nucreian justice and all that, but Angron didn't want to leave without his gladiator buddies (understandably). So the Emperor kidnapped him via teleport. The Emperor is an asshole. In my alternate universe, I made Daenus less of an asshole by having him at least try to rescue said gladiator buddies, by way of gassing the five (count em) attacking armies with the aforementioned mustard gas and claiming weapons malfunction...only the gladiators in question decided to go put everyone in the armies out of their misery while Daenus was busy distracting Angron. The gladiators did not have gas masks either. Same result, slightly less dickish Emperor.
> 
> Other than that, I did my best to stick as closely to the canon as possible.
> 
> Peep ownership:  
Games Workshop: All the Warhammer 40k stuff  
kaibun-creations: Xander, Lucifer, and Seymore.  
Me: The writing, the Emperor's name, and the altered backstories.
> 
> Enjoy~

Daenus walked unmarked into the Investiary, one of the many places in the Imperial Palace that had once been his home where he could go to be truly alone. Under normal circumstances, he would have been followed to the gates of the Investiary, and left alone upon entering; this day he had stepped into the Warp to make the journey.

He kept his eyes on the floor as he walked through a half-translucent, dreamlike version of the palace, scurrying with all shades of humanity. _Like insects, _he thought uncharitably. He admonished himself; they were doing the best they could with rote memory, religious creed, and ancient tradition. Even so, he had never wanted this.

He had never wanted any of this.

He merely stepped through the great doors of the Investiary; in the Warp, they did not exist, and so there was no need to open them and bother the guards. Once inside, he rematerialized with a heavy sigh and looked around.

Twenty plinths. All but two empty. Dorn hadn’t wanted anyone to know; he had told only his Emperor. The shame of letting saboteurs get this deep into the palace had been too much for him; Daenus had agreed to tell no one else.

_In no small part because this place was my shame too._

Tears filled Daenus’s eyes. Perhaps he should be asking himself where things had gone so wrong, but he knew exactly where he had made his mistakes. One, he had not explained to Lorgar, one of his most loyal sons for a long time, why he did not want to be a god, and had only acted when he had no other choice. Two, he had entirely mishandled Angron; he should not have gassed the armies that had been sent to kill him and his gladiators. He should have at least guessed that the terrible machines sandwiched in their skulls would have forced them to take the field, no matter who said otherwise. Had he sent Angron’s legion-to-be…perhaps.

And then there was Night Haunter. The only one of his Primarchs to grow up alone, and with a terrible curse of prophesy at that. He should never have allowed Haunter to go to battle. He should have kept him on Terra, and at least tried to be a father to him, to give him the childhood he hadn’t gotten on the world his gestation pod had been thrown to.

But it was more than that. He shouldn’t have lied to the Primarchs. Once he found them…he should have told them the truth. That they were the reincarnations of his ancient brothers, who had died when the planet now named Terra was young. He had meant to explain everything when they were born, on Terra, before the Chaos gods intervened and scattered them to the stars. And then when he had found them, one by one, all but two…

_I couldn’t bear to tell them of such a terrible burden. I thought it would be better to treat them as new people, the way all souls who cross the mythical river Lethe are said to become new people._

Daenus took a deep breath. He still couldn’t imagine that conversation. Guilliman, who had been resurrected thanks to the actions of some Eldar priestess or something—Roboute hadn’t been entirely clear on the subject—hadn’t taken the news well when Daenus had finally come clean to him. And Guilliman had always been the most stalwart of his sons—_brothers. I have to stop thinking of them as my sons._

_I have to give up that lie._

His tears were blood red when he looked up again at the empty plinths. It seemed fitting to begin here. This had always been meant to be a place of honor for his Primarchs: statues to glorify them as heroes, plinths to record their mighty deeds undertaken in the name of the Imperium. Now it would be a place of history instead; a place to record what had been, both in times remembered only by the Emperor, and in the time of the Crusade, the Heresies…and now.

He stood, unsheathing a knife he had filched from somewhere in the palace. There had been a small hunt for it, but it had been abandoned the moment the Adeptus Arbites had noted it on his person. The Emperor could break no law. Daenus could commit no treason. He carefully ran a finger down its edge; there was a shiver in the blade, all but impossible even for Daenus to detect, that hinted of its true destructive capabilities. Of the energy field it could surround itself with, to cauterize the wounds it caused.

He would have no need of the field this day.

First he opened his forearms, deeply and along the veins; a normal man would have bled out in moments, but even before his internment within and subsequent resurrection from the Golden Throne, Daenus would have been fine. He was a blood mage—what many had taken to calling a Perpetual, because of the insane ability to heal from nearly any mortal wound—and now a god. It would take far more than a knife to kill him.

“Dancing bears, painted wings…things I almost remember…” he sang, voice barely above a whisper. His own blood whirled around him in a miniature tornado as he opened his belly, the way an ancient, disgraced samurai would have done. “And a song someone sings, once upon a December.”

He closed his eyes; the blood spilling from his body would first destroy the remaining two statues. They represented a lie, a lie greater than any the Traitor-Primarchs believed he had told. “Someone holds me safe and warm…” he continued singing; the souls he had consumed during his millennia-long imprisonment resonated with the lyrics. The stone statues of Rogal Dorn and Alpharius (or had it been Omegon?) dissolved as his blood painted them. “Horses prance through a silver storm.” He stood, somewhat shakily; his body (still thankfully, welcomingly mortal) protested his abuse of it, though he felt no pain from his self-inflicted injuries. “Figures dancing gracefully, across my memory…”

He sank back into his mind, to a time before an Imperium, before any Crusade, great or numbered, to a time when his family had been whole. When his father and mother had still lived on ancient Terra with them, before they had left for the supposed greener pastures. Before his mother had told him that she was going to the place where the sidewalk ends. Before Omegon had been manipulated by the shaman of the village where they lived into killing his twin.

They had been happy children, and had caused no harm to anyone. He memorialized their happiness, as the ten-year-olds they had grown to be, with a butterfly to chase. Hope. Hope for a future that would never come.

The crushing weight when Alpharius’ death had shattered the illusion the shaman had forced on Omegon. He had screamed for their mother as he held the brutally beaten corpse that had been his twin; the rock he had used in desperation to defend himself from the illusionary man he had thought wanted to kill both him and his brother lay beside him, abandoned, and rust-red with Alpharius’ blood. Omegon had given himself over to his mother’s frenzy, not wanting to long outlive his brother.

_Far away, long ago, glowing dim as an ember… _the song lent Daenus strength as he created a second set of statues; these showed Alpharius and Omegon as their reincarnated selves. There would be no hiding the truth now. The twin Primarchs and their secrets were long dead, so far as anyone knew. Daenus could find no trace of their souls in the Immaterium, which meant (so far as he was aware) that they had died, and their souls had gone on to what rightfully awaited the souls of men past the Warp and the Chaos gods that waited there. This set of statues also showed their deaths, separate this time instead of one at the other’s hand. He blurred the faces of their killers, out of respect. They would be shown elsewhere in any case.

_Things my heart used to know, once upon a December._

One of his Lost Primarchs next. One of two of his reincarnated brothers that he had never found. His ancient life was shown as well; Daenus remembered he had been a gardener of great renown, that he had made it his goal to create greenery even in the harshest deserts. The hanging gardens he had helped design had outlived him, for he had been slain by the man he called king. This killer was given distorted, Babylonian-standard features, for Daenus had never known him. Only heard him described, years after the fact. Where the statue of his Primarch self should be, Daenus placed only a gestation pod, a signal to those who viewed it that this Primarch had been lost to the vastness of space and time.

_Someone holds me safe and warm…_

Corvus Corax. Raven speaker. Raised to godhood as the all-father of the Norse pantheon, Odin. Ragnarok had been prophesized; Ragnarok had come. Odin died, and the ascended Corvus died with him. This time he showed Corax’s ascension to godhood along with his life and death. The Primarch Corvus had fled the Imperium, fled the legion he had failed to reconstruct, to the Eye of Terror. Daenus showed this as Corvus mid-transformation into a raven, the word “nevermore” inscribed where his feet only just touched the ground.

Angron. Gladiator, even in ancient times. He had volunteered for the games so often, he had become a public figure. When he expressed dissatisfaction with the Roman leadership, they expressed their own with blades. The Primarch, his ascension to a Daemon Prince, the Prince he now was, all with the horrible Butcher’s Nails in his skull.

_Horses prance through a silver storm…_

Konrad Curze, who had gone insane. The world had become too much for him not long after Ragnarok and the news of Corvus’s death in just the way Odin’s had been prophesized. He had lived for a while, but in the end, had died alone. The Primarch, who had raised himself alone, the hinted reflections of the other personality, the Night Haunter, who had brought his planet to heel with targeted murders, and his death at the hands of an assassin.

Jaghatai Khan, who had led a warband of the people who would eventually become the Mongols. He had died nobly on the battlefield then, and it had taken nearly three dozen arrows to bring him down and stop his warband. The Primarch who had vanished; Daenus showed him leaping into a portal, into which a slender, inhuman foot was vanishing. Here too Daenus placed a red butterfly, this time atop the portal. Hope, hope that he would return one day.

Lorgar. Faithful Lorgar, who had started the entire Heresy, all because Daenus had rejected his attempts at worship. First his old life, as the leader of a Christian cult, and his death in the arena by starved lion. Daenus made certain to show the thinness and wretchedness of the lion in this statue; it deserved no blame for his death. The Primarch, and the Emperor’s rejection of his faith. Here Daenus pulled no punches, and deliberately made himself look cruel for this rejection, where he could have been more understanding of his son’s attempt to find Truth. Again the ascension to Daemon Prince, and the form he held now. As an afterthought, he added a shattered word beneath the rejection scene: understanding.

_Figures dancing gracefully…_

Mortarion, who had been long been fascinated with disease and death. He had died of the very diseases he had tried to cure; Daenus couldn’t remember whether it had been smallpox or the black death that had claimed his life at last, and so combined the two in his ancient death scene. The Primarch, again the ascension to daemon prince, his new, Nurgle-blessed or Nurgle-cursed form, depending on how you looked at it. Depending on how you saw the chaos gods.

Perturabo, the ancient craftsman and engineer, rival to the gods of artistry, who had eventually commandeered a ship and sailed west “over the edge of the world” as he had put it. Daenus chose to show a ship wrecked in a hurricane, with the words in his last letter engraved in the waves that swamped it: I shall wander forever amidst the broken and the lost. The Primarch, one more ascension, one more Daemon Prince for the collection. Daenus had failed so many of his brothers…

_Across my memory._

Lion El’Jonson, the Lion of the Forests. The Lion who, in ancient times, had been hailed as a saint, an angel, a herald of victorious battle. The saint of battle who had been slain at the last by Joan of Arc, upon whom he had smiled as he died. Daenus had met with the woman just before she was put to death for witchcraft, and chose to immortalize the words she claimed his brother had spoken to her with his dying breath: blessings upon the mighty. He chose also to show Joan of Arc in the ancient manner she had usually been depicted, as a saint herself. The Primarch, and finally a break in the ascensions, for he slept in stasis on a bier deep within the fortress of the Dark Angels, where no one could find him. One day Daenus would need to go and wake him up, but for now, he would be shown resting as Snow White in her ancient fairy tale.

Sanguinius. Daenus hesitated here. To show his death was to admit what he had done so long ago, how far he had fallen. To admit that even the Emperor of Mankind could fall to Chaos. And here, here he would not be able to show the resolution, because it involved another Primarch. But in the end, he managed, and showed not only his early life before he met with Xander, the vampiric Egyptian pharaoh, but his transformation into a vampire, and how he had been after. His friendship with the fallen angel Lucifer, his occasional caring for Lucifer’s creation named Seymore…and finally, his death in the trenches of the First World War. Daenus’s arms shook as he ordered his blood, his artistic medium, to show himself finding Sanguinius dying of mustard gas (the same gas he had reluctantly used against Angron’s enemies), and to show himself climbing out of the trenches, leaving Sanguinius’ body behind. Then the Primarch, the wings Daenus had worked so hard to give his reincarnation, and his death at the feet of Horus, with Daenus himself just entering the battle against his wayward brother.

He faltered. Didn’t want to continue. But there were more Primarchs, more brothers whose lives he needed to chronicle, and he had yet to come to the most important of them all. He steeled himself with a deep breath. _Far away, long ago, glowing dim as an ember…_

Magnus the Red, the sorcerer whose writings had brought down the full fury of the witch hunts and the Spanish Inquisition. Magnus the Red, one of the few Primarchs who had inherited their father’s brilliant red hair. Magnus the Red, who had tried to warn the Emperor…whom the Emperor hadn’t believed. The sheer power Magnus had held as a Primarch, amplified by his panic and the visions he had received at the hands of the Chaos gods…another ascension. Another Daemon Prince. Another failure.

Roboute Guilliman, the only Primarch who yet moved in the universe who maintained his loyalty to his gene-father. He had sailed to the then-New World, had seen the people living there, had tried to convince the settlers from the Old World to settle elsewhere…had died in a crossfire between the two factions. As a Primarch, his life, his first almost-death at the hands of Fulgrim and the damned knife that had taken Horus, his preservation in stasis on his homeworld, his resurrection…his return. Daenus imbued his final statue with more nobility than he had given any thus far, and surrounded him with more red butterflies. Hope. Perhaps the last hope for the Imperium, and certainly Daenus’s own last hope.

Rogal Dorn, the stalwart defender. He who had organized the Jewish defense of their sacred Menorah, who had sacrificed some of his own blood that it might continue to burn and give the defenders hope. Butterflies arched from the candle flames. Eight days they had held out. Eight days the menorah burned. And on the eighth day, Dorn had died, having sacrificed all that he was in the defense of his friends. The Primarch Rogal Dorn, who had done the same thing for the Imperium. His separated skeletal hands, with the thousands of names inscribed on them of the leaders of his space marines.

_Things my heart used to know…_

Vulkan, who had fled to Rome from Carthage, and taken the name of one of their gods to avoid detection, capture, and a fate worse than death at the hands of either empire. Vulkan, who had died hours after his dearly beloved wife, without whom he could not bear to live. He had stopped his own heart with his blood magic. Vulkan the Primarch, who had endured unimaginable torture at the hands of Night Haunter, who had eventually disappeared, leaving behind nine artifacts for his space marines to find. Daenus showed five of them, with four clusters of butterflies marking the positions of the others, and a swarm of them half-outlining the shape of the vanished Primarch.

Fulgrim. Fulgrim who had loved pretty things in both lives, Fulgrim who in his first life had led an easy life as a male pet of the Chinese court. Fulgrim, whom the Mongols following Genghis Khan had laughed at when he had attempted to defend the child he had adopted with one of the Chinese Emperor’s lesser sons. Fulgrim who had been given a mocking crown of molten gold to mark his status. Fulgrim who had held out for a year with the melted crown upon his head. Fulgrim who had finally given up healing himself when he had found his adopted son and his chosen husband, dead at the hands of his tormentors. Fulgrim the Primarch, Fulgrim the traitor, Fulgrim the ascended, Fulgrim as he was now: snakelike, four-armed, and bound to the Chaos Gods. Fulgrim whom the Emperor had failed.

Ferrus Manus, whose hands were of iron in both lives. An accident had taken them as a child; their father had taught him to keep the wounds scabbed over so that he could use his blood magic, his birthright, as replacement hands. Eventually he had made himself new hands of iron—Daenus took care to show the masterful articulation in the joints, though by modern standards, the prosthetics were hopelessly quaint—and given himself the ability to use them nearly as well as his original hands with his blood magic. Ferrus Manus who had helped Perturabo build the ancient Antikythera mechanism, the ancient clock they claimed would keep Terra in sync with the universe forever, who had been killed on its steps before its completion and before he could tell anyone else how it worked. His death had not helped poor Perturabo. Ferrus Manus the Primarch who had been Fulgrim’s closest friend, who had been a masterful smith, perhaps the best in the Imperium, before being beheaded during the Heresies. Here Daenus did his best to show Fulgrim being ridden by a daemon as he performed this deed, though Fulgrim had never really repented, and had instead run headfirst into the Chaos Gods to flee from what Daenus sincerely hoped was his shame at this deed.

_Things it yearns to remember…_

The other lost Primarch. Here even Daenus could only just remember what his departed brother had looked like; he remembered draconic wings, a scaled body halfway between forms, but for the life of him, he could remember neither true shape. Instead, he showed his brother hooded and robed, and left a scattering of bones in the desert sands to represent the death he half-remembered his brother had gotten. Another gestation pod to represent what he had never found.

Leman Russ, who hunted with wolves. The first of their brothers to sail across the seas to what would eventually be called the New World. The brother Daenus had assumed was alive for so long that it had taken centuries for him to learn that he had died to the very wolves he called pack. He hoped it had been merciful. He hoped there had been reason behind it. But by the time Daenus had learned of the event, it had long passed into legend. Leman Russ the Primarch who had also gone hunting in the Eye of Terror, but none knew what for. Daenus chose to show him chasing more butterflies. Whatever the physical form of the thing…it was hope he had sought. 

_And a song someone sings…_

Daenus’s voice faltered. Horus. And he had thought depicting Sanguinius’ death had been difficult. He did his best, but the statues he created weren’t enough. They didn’t show everything. And so Daenus shattered the plinth Horus would have stood upon, and instead dedicated the entire wall of the Investiary to the story of Horus…and of himself.

Everything he had kept back from the entire Imperium. The story of Daenus’s own fall, the tragedy for the Imperium of Horus’s fall, the comedy it had been for the Chaos Gods and for Khorne in particular. Daenus should have chosen Guilliman for Warmaster. He should have foreseen that the Chaos Gods would have seen it as a stroke of brilliance to so wholly corrupt the one brother who had brought Daenus back from the brink of daemonhood. He should have let Horus win. He should have let the Imperium fall. Should have never created the thing in the first place…his pain, his sorrow, his shame, his guilt, all immortalized as a fresco lining the walls.

It did need statues. One for the past, when Horus had saved the Emperor, had brought Daenus back to sanity from the depths of Khorne-induced bloodthirst. And one for the less-distant past, when Daenus had tried and failed to do the same, and had sacrificed his own healing in the process. Between the two, his emaciated corpse-self on the Golden Throne.

“Once…upon a…December,” he whispered, tears making bright red tracks down his face. He healed his wounds; it didn’t take much more than a thought, though it would likely take a bit of time and a lot of rest before he could perform a working of this magnitude again. The strength that had sustained him throughout his casting failed; he collapsed to his knees, unable to hold back sobs.

Guilliman held him as he wept. It should have been Horus.  



End file.
